Fort Worth Linux Users Group Discussion Board

Hi everyone

As we all know, Randy did a great job administering the web pages and forum and scheduling and leading the meetings. Since it appears that he has moved on to other things I think we need to figure out how to keep the group humming along as smoothly as it always has.

It's not a manhattan project to have monthly informal meetings, but there are still some things that need to be done, and some things that would be nice if they were done. Everyone who wants to contribute to the group should be able to, because there are plenty of tasks to perform.

Some of the obvious tasks I can think of right now.

• Web presence content maintenance
  
  • update web site -david miller
    
  • approve new forum members -terry
    
  • send announcement emails each month for meeting -david miller
    
• Web presence technical side
  
  • maintain technical aspects of website
    
  • maintain contact with hosting provider -terry
    
  • Hold passwords (joomla, phpbb, mysql, web host, etc.)-terry, david miller
    
  
  
• Scheduling/booking
  
  • make sure room at vfw is available before meetings --james
    
  • make schedule for upcoming meetings --james
    
  
  
• Meeting Facilitation
  
  • Chair meetings ????? what does this really mean?
    
  • Take minutes -- dennis
    
  • secure projection equipment, power strips, etc. -terry
    
  • make sure people sign the guest register -terry
    

• Donuts
  
  • Box 1-davemon
  • Box 2- davemon
  • Box 3 - davemon

This is just a list that I thought up while sitting here, so if you can think of other things, or think some of this unnecessary, or grouped incorrectly, please give your input.

Ideally, one or more people can volunteer to take responsibility in each of these areas and/or tasks. If you have some ideas and want to create some responsibilities for yourself, that would be great. This is something we can discuss during the next meeting.

Hopefully doing this will increase feelings of ownership among all the members and create a framework in which the group can accomplish great things. It will also make the group less dependent on one person.

Lets discuss this here and at the next meeting.

Thanks

If you didn't make it to the meeting, we had a good discussion about what each of us can contribute to the group. We added some names next to each of the tasks, and discussed what these tasks mean. If you missed out, don't worry we can talk more next meeting.

Some unsresolved questions from the discussion were, how formal do we want the group to be? for example should we be able to take votes? Do we need a chairman/faciliator? An argument against a more formal approach is that we haven't ever needed to make decisions, and things were going just fine informally. Arguments for a more formal approach is that it would provide more transparency and a framework to make decisions.

Another question was what to do with the forum. Some wanted to cut down the number of sub forums to one or two, others wanted to keep the numerous subforums as repositories of information. We did all agree that posts should not expire, so we should turn off the phpbb auto-expire feature.

Thanks to everyone who volunteered. I am creating joomla accounts for those who need them. Dennis, I don't have an email adress for you, so email me at dave@frop.net and i'll give you your account info.

Dude!

With this super clean, and limited site...

It looks like the Itchy and Scratchy Show..I only see David and Terry on everything...

Looks like the group is on it's last legs of dieing

Hi Wayne, I sent you a PM. Hope your trip to Ukraine was fun!

As long as there are at least 2 people who wants to talk linux once a month there will be a group, so I think that saying the group is dying is a little pessimistic.

If we have the content, we can expand the number of forums. Nearly all the forums were empty.

You were at the meeting where we talked about this post, and you gave some good input. If anyone wants to take on more responsibility that would be great, the point of my post was to get MORE people involved.

TexWebslinger wrote:Dude!

With this super clean, and limited site...

It looks like the Itchy and Scratchy Show..I only see David and Terry on everything...

Looks like the group is on it's last legs of dieing

This is indeed a sad thing, but even if the monthly meetings do die, I could see keeping the forums alive. That being said, it is indeed nice to meet someone in person every now and then who appreciates tinkering with their computer(s).

Rumors of FWLUGs death are greatly exaggerated. See you this saturday

That's AWESOME!!! For those interested, the FWLUG facebook group is up... look for it in the search at the top of Facebook and become a member today!

I posted the info for the meeting this weekend...